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We were not. Why the hell had I even said that?

“Emergency situation cohabitation participants?”

“Rolls right off the tongue.” He smirked.

“Unlike paint, which apparently rolls directly onto your face.”

He wiped at his nose, making it worse. Now he had a purple stripe across his cheek like very festive war paint.

“Here.” I grabbed a rag without thinking, reaching up to clean the paint off. “You’re making it worse.”

“Story of my life.”

“Hold still.” I scolded him.

“Yes ma’am.”

I stepped between his legs where he sat on Noa’s toy chest, bringing us almost eye level. The rag was damp with paint thinner, and I carefully wiped at the purple streaking his cheek. This close, I could see the gold flecks in his green eyes. The faint scar through his left eyebrow. The way his throat moved when he swallowed.

“You have very steady hands,” he said quietly.

“You have very unsteady painting skills.”

“Can’t all be perfect.”

His hand came up to cover mine, stilling my motion. I’d gotten all the paint off thirty seconds ago but kept wiping anyway because stepping back meant ending whatever this was.

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“I really want to…”

“DADDY THERE’S A SPIDER!”

Noa’s scream could have shattered glass. Tyson and I jerked apart so fast I dropped the rag and he knocked over a paint tray. Purple splattered across the drop cloth as we both rushed toward the bathroom where Noa stood on the toilet lid pointing at the world’s tiniest spider.

“Kill it! Kill it with fire!”

“No arson,” I shook my head. “We discussed this.”

“Then kill it with something else!”

Tyson scooped up the spider with a piece of toilet paper and flushed it while Noa narrated its dramatic demise like a nature documentary. “And now the spider goes to the water place where all the spiders go when they’re dead. Goodbye spider.”

Crisis averted, we returned to painting. But something had shifted. We moved around each other carefully now, maintaining a three-foot buffer at all times. When I needed the roller he was using, I waited instead of reaching. When he needed more paint, he asked instead of stepping into my space.

The careful distance was almost worse than the accidental touches.

***

By afternoon, Noa’s room was thoroughly purple. She declared it very pretty before promptly falling asleep on the couch, exhausted from supervising.

I helped clean brushes in silence, hyperaware of Tyson moving around the kitchen. The domestic rhythm of it made my chest tight.

“I should go,” I said once the last brush was clean. “Thanks for letting me crash here. And for breakfast. And for not making it weird when I commandeered your bed.”

“You didn’t commandeer anything. I put you there.”